Episode 303: BEIJING WATERMELON (1989)

Trylove

We’re no strangers to the work of Nobuhiko Obayashi. A visionary and an auteur, almost all of his work centers the human experience, especially through the media of film. Shared emotion, his filmography says, is the most important thing a human can feel. Can choose to feel.

Based on a true story, BEIJING WATERMELON is no exception: Shunzo (Bengal), a humble grocer befriends the Chinese students living near his store, helping them adjust to Tokyo life. Though it comes at a personal cost to his marriage to his wife Michi (Masako Motai), his family life, and his business, Shunzo finds in the exercise an increased capacity for empathy in even the modest routine of his life.

At the same time, the film also bears the scars of its production fiasco: The student protests and subsequent massacre at Tiananmen Square in Beijing interrupted filming for key scenes near the end of the story. But BEIJING WATERMELON wears those scars proudly, shifting into pseudo-documentary style to call attention to the power of film to inspire empathy and its inherent lack of immediacy.

As the actor playing Shunzo says during one of the film’s out-of-character cutaways, “Sometimes, reality is more powerful than movies.”

References:

• Give to the Trylon’s Film Forever Fund so they never have to increase ticket prices!
• Watch BEIJING WATERMELON on the Internet Archive
• Check out our episodes on Obayashi’s HAUSU (1977) and HIS MOTORBIKE, HER ISLAND (1986) wherever you listen
• “Obayashi the Dramatist: Beijing Watermelon (1989)” by Natalie Marlin for Perisphere, the Trylon blog
• “Everyone Knows What to do with a Watermelon” by Nicole Rojas-Oltmanns for Perisphere, the Trylon blog
• Check the calendar, preview upcoming series, and buy tickets at https://www.trylon.org/
• Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/perisphere-blog-post-guidelines/

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Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 303: BEIJING WATERMELON (1989)

5:27 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

8:22 - The “project” of Obayashi’s 43-year career and his impact on cinema

26:02 - The packaging of time in BEIJING WATERMELON

35:13 - How Shunzo is changed through his friendship with the Chinese students

40:18 - The humanist lean and fourth wall-breaking tendencies

50:28 - How essential is the metatextual stuff to the point of the movie?

1:00:03 - What did Obayashi ‘learn’ between HAUSU (1977) and BEIJING WATERMELON?

1:09:04 - The Junk Drawer

1:21:44 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1989

1:27:06 - Cody’s Noteys: Pay-jing Watermelon (US grocery price trivia)